BLACK ACRETHE 2011 YEARBOOK 1 2 Editor’s Foreword The 2011 edition of Blackacre is only the second since its revival last year after many years of non-publication. It is unclear whether the reason for the lack of a yearbook for most of the 2000s was a lack of interest from final years, or a lack of interest from the SULS Publications Director. Luckily for the class of 2011, neither of those became an issue in the production of Blackacre 2011. Although it is a tremendously time consuming publication to put together for all involved, it is an extremely important momento of what has been for you a very long time at university. It is a publication which started in the 1930s and has featured in its pages some of the giants of the legal profession. It would be a shame if the university shenanigans in which future giants engaged were not chronicled for future use! As we edited this publication, we noted some running themes throughout the personal profiles. It was extremely heartening to see that, despite a lot of coffee and a lot of last-minute assignment stress, there was a lot of positive optimism about time at Law School. There was clearly a great deal of im- portance placed on the value of friendships made at university as well as the education each person received. It appears to have been a tough road for a lot of people (I doubt anyone expected anything less), but in the end, it seems to have not been all that bad. And for a third year, I am very glad that even after another two years, I might still have something nice to say about it all. It was also clear who the best teachers were. The likes of Gerangelos, Twomey, Anderson, McCracken and McCallum came up again and again, for their humour, their insight and their character. It was clear that the entire year was asleep during The Legal Profession (a very worrying sign), but that eve- ryone should study in Shanghai if they get the chance. It was seems from everyone’s favourite quotes that the pastimes of this year group predominantly involved watching Legally Blonde and reading Denning judgments – both worthwhile pursuits indeed. And for those of you who regretted missing First Year Law Camp, we’ve included some photos from the experience to show you what it was like (read: rub it in). I would like to thank Patrick Weller, Dominic McNeil and Philip Chan for their assistance in editing this publication. I would also like to thank the 2011 SULS Executive, who offered me a tremendous amount of support not only in making this publication but throughout the entire year. I really hope that you enjoy your yearbook. Whether you’re reading it straight after Law School or many years down the track, it will hopefully allow you to remember the good times that you had at university and the people who graduated with you. It may inspire you to ask: I wonder where they are now? We wish you all the best of luck with your future endeavours. To begin a theme I mentioned which runs through this book: Congratulations Class of 2011 – you did it! Jackson Wherrett Editor and Publications Director 2011 3 Contents Perspectives on Law School An Interview with Ross Anderson 6 Emma Zhang Judges can be funny...no, really... 13 Alexandra Stead The RyeBulletin Dworkinism/Hedgehog Anthology 17 Julia Xi Bing Su An Interview with Ron McCallum 20 Bibhu Aggarwal Proposed Change to SULS Constitution, AGM 2011 22 GENTS Perspectives on Law School Reminiscing: Photos Final Year Dinner: Photobooth 24 First Year Camp 2007 36 Informals and Law Balls 37 Final Year Dinner 39 Individual Profiles A-Z 44 4 Perspectives on Law School 5 AN INTERVIEW WITH ROSS ANDERSON Emma Zhang From the personal profiles submitted for this publication, Ross Anderson seems to be a stand out in the faculty at Sydney Law School. He teaches across numerous areas, predominantly in Torts and Private International Law. Having graduated from this Law School in 1973, he has certainly seen a few Sydney Law students in his time. Emma Zhang caught up with him and asked him to reflect on his life in the law and offer some advice to those of you graduating this year. What was it like for you at law school? I did my LLB at Sydney when it was a four year degree. I am the last mem- ber of the faculty now who was in the old old law school. So the law school before the law school in Phillip Street down where the leagues club is now. While I was a student we moved to what I still call the new law school which is in fact the building that you would have started off in. That’s where Justice Emmett said he started off in. Were you class- mates? Well in fact, we did a Roman law course together as a postgraduate course before I went to study overseas and when I was in practice. There were only about three of us in the class but we did it there in the evenings studying Roman law with the big charts of the Visigoths (laughs). In a sense what was so different about the legal education then was that people were full time stu- dents but they were also involved in full time articles of clerkship. One of the reasons why the law school was located where it was was because we all worked in law firms. We would come to classes at the law school sort of at half past 8 or 9 and we would do a class in the morning, sometimes a class at lunchtime and we would come to class at the end of the day (not in the evening but we would have a class that would go to 6’oclock). So I lived in a college at university. I would get dressed in a suit everyday and go downtown, often go to class at law school and then walk down to the law firm. I was at Allens, what was then Allen Allen & Hemsley which is now Allens Arthur Robinson. It was different so you see you needed to make a student life of another kind. There wasn’t quite so much socialising and nobody was in the library because no one was around! The dynamic of the law school was very different you couldn’t describe it as a particularly lively place because people would sort of come to class and leave. Just about everyone was an articled clerk and the few people who weren’t they would be working in something else. There wasn’t that sort of full time student that we have now even though [nowadays] people do work a couple of days and have paralegal jobs. These were full time jobs and if you wanted to go and do something like get married you had to get permis- sion from the admissions board to take time off because you had to tick off an X number of weeks in order to get your articles of clerkship. But it was a great system of learning and doing at the same time. You would be working on the trans- action and you’d go to the class and sometimes it would be somebody from your own law firm who was the teacher. There were a lot more part time teachers then. At one point there was no full time member of staff, they were all practitioners. Practice and Procedure [for instance] was taken entirely 6 by Queen’s Counsel. He took the whole year as a single group. That sounds like quite an intense experience, so what do you think got you through law school? I really got quite interested in the academic aspect of the law but I think it helped a great deal in terms of motivation that you were actually doing stuff at the same time. You know you were litigating cases, you were writing or helping to write opinions. You were incorporating companies at the same time as you were learning about companies or winding them up. So that maintained or helped to maintain a high level of motivation apart from enjoying it - it was enjoyable too (chuckles). What don’t / do you miss about being at law school? What I found was that after I had been in a law firm as a solicitor I ah, the University of Sydney gave me a scholarship to go and study overseas and the law firm were very happy for me to take leave to go and do so. And I discovered the joy of being a full time student. Where did you go overseas? I went to University College, London. My wife worked at University Hospital which was just across the road. I discovered how wonderful it was to just get up in the morning go to class, do some work during the day and have fun every night of the week. It was an absolute rule as a postgraduate student that by the end of the day you never did any work at night and you never worked on weekends and it seemed to it all worked out well. So that a great change from working full time and studying fulltime where you had almost no discretionary time and the weekends just had to be spent studying. Both days of the weekend. Much like people who have very serious part time jobs now they just don’t get a lot of spare time on the weekends.